<p>To quote Cliff Stoll, "If we discourage our children from considering the skilled trades, neither our theories nor our pipes will hold water.</p>
<p>I have long believed that the skilled licensed trades(electrician, plumbing, beautician, surveying, etc) offer many of our children the best chance for success as adults. It offers those so inclined a ready opportunity to start their own businesses.</p>
<p>My late father in law did not graduate from HS, but he was a mechanical genius, a phrase I use without exaggeration. When he encountered a mechanical problem with an engine, a pump, an electrical motor he just knew....knew how to take it apart, knew how to diagnose and fix the problem, knew how to reassemble it. </p>
<p>One of our roles as parents is to identify the talents and interests of our children and give them opportunities to develop them to the best of their abilities. For some it may be academics, others the arts and for others the trades.</p>
<p>Trying to force a round peg into a square hole will only lead to frustration in most instances.</p>
<p>As I've told my child many times, the key to happiness is to find your passion and pursue it to the best of your ability...whatever that passion is. The kicker is that you have to be able to support yourself, but you define what the level of support is. One woman's passion may be plumbing, another race car driving! </p>
<p>My dad always kept a framed cartoon on his desk at work of a man showing pictures of his 3 daughters to a friend. BTW, my sister is a lawyer and I'm a doctor. It said "This is my daughter the doctor, and this is my daughter the lawyer...and this is the one who really made good and good $$$...she's a plumber!"</p>
<p>I have always said my "next" husband is going to be a plumber...every house I've lived in has had water problems including the latest which was built brand new!
Another perspective..my S,pretty smart kid,all AP's etc. has a very specific major and career goal in mind..sports management (business related).Everyone from his GC on down to the people next door have been surprised and tried to dissuade him as the career choice and major choice is "beneath him and his abilities", and the choice of colleges offering the major are not "selective" enough..not an Ivy or first tier among them.So the prejudice extends past the blue collar trades into a perception that some college majors are more prestigous than others and certain career choices are more "pure".How much talk is there on these boards about business majors...practically NONE!</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"This is my daughter the doctor, and this is my daughter the lawyer...and this is the one who really made good and good $$$...she's a plumber!"<<</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>An old joke:</p>
<p>A doctor gets a bill from his plumber and says: "$400! For 30 minutes work? I'm a doctor and I don't make that much!''</p>
<p>The plumber replies: "When I was a doctor, neither did I."</p>
<p>My H is a contractor. Works with his hands. Plays golf. Has some high "falutin" friends- doctors lawyers bankers and some not so high "falutin" friends- cops, firefighters, other contractors...they are all just guys taking care of their families</p>
<p>The women we know are the same- coming from all kinds of jobs or volunteering</p>
<p>Not everyone can or should be doctors and lawyers or finance people</p>
<p>We need road builders, bridge builders, nurses, electricians- they are the real group that holds this country together</p>
<p>I know a lawyer, MD and CFO who all hate their jobs. The lawyer wanted to be a farmer, the MD a musician (parents made him turn down Julliard), and the CFO hates large corporate business and accounting. All chose these fields because of parental pressure, all are 40+. The moral: college is no guarantee of happiness, that comes from elsewhere, including following one's heart.</p>
<p>I think it's a bit too idealistic to expect everything from a job, but what's to say these people can't do it on the side as a part-time job. My father was very good in Art, attended art school, then many more degrees later and ended up working in management.He also satisfied his creative needs by doing these things on a part time basis. He was a writer for a magazine(paid), he often painted on the side. Same with my aunt who worked in a bank but is a poet on the side because you certainly make money as a poet.
I personally would love to work in a nursery, my friend and I love plants, we even volunteer to work in a nursery sometimes, but they all looked at us a bit weird, so we started these things in our own back yard.</p>
<p>Why is it "too idealistic" to try to make a living following your passion? I would agree that if things don't work out, then the person needs to make a change -- but you won't find out unless you try. Of course you may also need to work at something else to make ends meet -- but I know many successful artists and writers who make their livings doing what they love best. Keep in mind that JK Rowling was a young mom living on welfare when she started writing the first Harry Potter novel -- it was a good thing for her that she followed her impulse to write rather than doing something more practical at the time.</p>
<p>Getting back to the original question posed-I'm not sure if it's anymore fashionable now to look down on tradesmen than it has been for hundreds of years. Similar to the tendency to favor private schooling over what some people reagrd as inferior public schooling, classicsm runs rampant in the US - as it does most everywhere...and I am beginning to think it is a tendency hard-wired into our genetic make-up passed down from thousands of years (much like the knee-jerk reaction toward meeting someone racially dissimilar) hard-wired into our genetic make-up.
Thoughtful, intelligent people usually manage to get past this innate (groundless) snobbery and come to understand that in monetary terms, for instance, electricians make alot more than most college English professors; plumbers never worry about lack of work or being laid off; and most construction workers don't have to deal with hideous back-stabbing corporate politics. As long as people are doing what tghey enjoy, feeling productive, and making enough to support their families, what does it matter? But for some people -- far too many -- it does matter. And those are the kind of people I avoid like the plague.</p>
<p>But I also think Susantm has hit the nail of the head for many parents re: encouraging college over vocational training...and that is the idea of keeping your options open and that many trades position are physically taxing, etc.</p>
<p>It is true that physical jobs are physical.
However given the state of national health, that seems to be a plus rather than a minus.
Union workers also often have good health care benefits where salaried employees are losing ground.
I think a college education is valuable, but not so that you will find instant or even guaranteed employability. That just isnt' gonna happen.</p>
<p>Work with computers all day,sitting 8 hours or more at a desk in a cubicle or an office. After some time the plumber,carpenter,auto mechanic jobs looks pretty good.</p>
<p>I have numerous clients(granted east coast big city location) that are in the trades and make far more than the college educated white collar workers.They are happier and set their schedules around family obligations. So from where I sit I have tremendous respect for the people that took the risk, skipped college and went to technical schools. Especially on a day like today- blue skies 80 degrees, I should be out digging a ditch. I admit however, as one ages the trades become more difficult to do. Energy levels lower along with motivation. That is when the white collar worker has it easier?</p>
<p>Songman, I hear you....
We moved east when my last child was a baby and the only jobs I was offered were high-pressure ones an hours communte away. I opeted for less money and time with the kids so I took on a local paper route for three years! We kinda starved but at least I got to raise my baby and I had a great time tossing papers, being out at the break of day watching foxes and deer melt into the woods, and oyaster boats out on the Bay...my arms got strong hefting all the heavy papers...and *I could always turn around and see my toddler smiling back at me...really, I thouroughly wenjoyed myself. It beat a small office with ringing phones.</p>
<p>Songman, many bluecollar workers move up to more sedentary positions as they age - the construction worker becomes a contractor, the plumber or electrician ends up in business for himself, sending other, younger employees out on many jobs. Of course not all end up this way -- but if you are talking about a choice being made by an intelligent youngster who would be smart enough for college if that's what he/she wanted -- I think that in the long run that person is going to be the type to end up in management level positions.</p>
<p>Also, keep in mind that in today's world, jobs don't last forever, but experience gained in one area can be applied to another. Experience is not limited to a specific skill (like plumbing), but also in the business & personal aspects related to the work. That is, the youngster starting out as a plumber also sees how the business is run, and observes whether his boss is doing an efficient job or not. The business aspect of running a plumbing business could be transferred to something else - say, running a locksmith business (also need to be on call for emergencies 24 hours a day, but far less likely to be exposed to raw sewage). Business and interpersonal skills transfer.</p>
<p>You hear some interesting stories when you contract for work around your home and start talking to the people you are contracting with. </p>
<p>My own work does not require a college degree and I work with many people who do not have degrees. I have a law degree and I have met other ex-lawyers doing similar things as me -- some who are envious because they are still straddling between part-time lawyering and making a living at the new occupation, whereas I have been able to give up lawyering entirely. I will say that my law background transferred over very nicely to business (any business) -- at least I don't have to hire an outsider to help me write a contract. But the main thing it gave me was more confidence: I viewed myself as capable of more. That meant that I volunteered to take on more tasks that I really was not particularly qualified for (mostly related to computer skills) -- I was confident in my ability to learn. So of course a college degree is valuable -- it just really isn't essential for someone who has a good idea of what they want to do and the commitment and energy to follow through on that goal.</p>
<p>We had a contractor and his team working on various projects around our house last year, and we ended up having some conversations as we were always around each other. He told me that I treated him so well and spoke to him as an equal. I was disgusted with the idea that people he worked for treated him as anything less. To me, he's a skilled professional who puts food on the table for his family, just like my husband. My husband wears a suit, so what? It still riles me when I think of a man like that not being treated with dignity.</p>
<p>My view on this is again, its not the parents decision its the young adult's decision. By High School graduation a teenager is ready to make decisions for himself. White collar, blue collar, stable, unstable...it doesnt really matter. It's not your life and therefore, not your decision to make!</p>
<p>Calmom, JK Rowling is my daughter favorite author. In fact, D wants to be a writer just like her(lol).
What I meant by being "idealistic" is that sometimes you may find it's your passion but just because it's your passion that does not mean you're talent enough to earn a living in that passion. There are plenty of writers who can't find any body to publish anything for them, see the movie "Sideways".
Same with my example with my aunt, just because she wrote tons of poems that does not mean she would have been able to earn a living selling her poems and supporting 13 kids. That's the idealistic part.
My husband's best friend plays guitar very well, not quite Eric Clapton level and has a beautiful voice but he did not want to pursue a career in music instead he chose engineering/marketing because he said he did not want a hard life. But now after being laid off from a Marketing job, he is earning a modest living in this passion at 5o+.
These are few examples that I can give you to illustrate my point about the idealistic part. An even if you do find a way to earn a living in these fields I'm
sure that there are part of these careers that you don't like. Let say if you love to be a guitarist in rock band, you have to do some touring and that might not be something you like, more like something you put up with, so that what I mean about loving your job 100%.</p>
<p>But Susie, a person can't know if they can make it pursuing their passion unless they try. They may not succeed -- and they do need to know when to call it quits and move on to something else -- nothing sadder than a 45-year-old chronically unemployed actor or singer or screenwriter who never faced up to reality -- unless maybe its a 45-year-old accountant or attorney or banker who despises his job and spends every waking minute wishing he were doing something else. </p>
<p>But I think that a person who really cares deeply about something - whatever it is -- and who wants to make that "something" their career - should at least give it a try for long enough to at least get it out of their system, if they don't succeed. </p>
<p>That isn't to say that everyone needs to make a career out of their passion. Some people prefer to keep work and their personal lives separate, and wouldn't enjoy their passion if it weren't something they were doing for fun.</p>
<p>no, I'm not against trying. In fact, I'm all for it, especially when kids are young and starting out. Trust me! I just said in my post that it's kind idealistic to expect to love your job 100% like the post #26, where idad said the doctor wants to be a farmer, it sounds like the grass is always greener on the other side. My thinking as I was reading that post is to let the doctor become a farmer for a year and he'd probably wish he were a doctor again(lol).</p>
<p>But often a young adult starting in college won't really have a passion for something, it's just what they like doing. My husband loved playing his trumpet in HS but quickly realized that he didn't have the talent for doing it full time and didn't want to teach. He did have a talent for math and became an engineer. For the last few years he's been playing in a band on the side while holding down his "real" job as an engineer. He also is an excellent carpenter and a general Mr. Fix-it. My father in law was a chemist for duPont and always painted as a hobby. Now that he's retired he has more time for his painting. He's also a Mr. fix-it. I think both my husband and FIL feel that their professional jobs were/are as meaningful as their artistic pursuits and their creative building and repairing jobs around the house. </p>
<p>Why do we think of people as so one-dimensional that if they like one thing, that they wouldn't also be good at something else? I'm glad my husband didn't choose to do music full time. As much satisfaction as he gets from playing, I also see the quirky politics of being in a band and the dissatisfaction when there aren't enough gigs, or concern about a venue, keeping the crowd satisified, etc. BTW, the people in his band all hold down full time jobs as both white and blue collar workers.</p>
<p>a friend of ours who has a Ph.d in stats is also in a band,there is a strong tie between music and math as advocates for improved music education in the schools will tell you.
The lead singer of Coldplay has honors in ancient history from a London university which is where he met the other members of the band.
When my daughter graduated from high school, she planned to go to an art school, not even go to liberal arts school and major in art but actually attend an art school. However with my encouragment she took a year off to volunteer and ultimately decided to get a biology degree instead.</p>